So apparently...

I blog like a boy. I found the Gender Genie and decided to check a few of my blog posts out, and they all (with only one exception) came back as male. Hmm. Interesting. Maybe I'll check out some of my fiction later and see what happens then. It's pretty funny though-this thing is supposed to be accurate. But then- My Heritage (that website that tells you your celebrity look-alike) is supposed to be accurate too but they give such random assortments as Anna Popplewell and Rachel Weiz to Gabriel Batistuda and Edward Teller. Yeah. I don't think that's exactly accurate...

The internet is a funny little place.

What I did during Education Week...

The following are two little spats of England-style writing I did during Education Week-prepare yourself for nonsense. These are unedited stream-of-thought writing experiments.

22 August:

I'm ditching out on a class which is probably not a good sign since school hasn't started yet. I took one look at the crowded classroom and had a few thoughts consisting of "no way", "too many people" and "fire hazard". That would have been an interesting theory to test. Run into the room and yell fire. Instead I decided to do something else and now I'm writing nonsense on a piece of paper that was supposed to be filled with the key to getting my spiritual life back in order and my hand is cramped and I'm frustrated because I can't hand-write nearly as fast as I can type and this was so much easier (if more romantic?) than when I wrote on my computer, but for all that my cramped and awful writing is hardly romantic either. So there it is. I am solution-less. (What was the problem?)

Campus is a surreal kind of place this time of year. Normally this spot is crowded with people studying or making out or talking with friends only now it's just me and a mother with her two girls and none of us is studying or making out.

I just stopped. I killed my groove. I started staring off and thinking about unpacking and buying groceries since I have no food and how the JFSB courtyard is supposed to resemble the cloisters of places like Christ Church or Westminster and it kind of does only not enough to be a sanctuary and just enough to make me homesick (even though England is only my imaginary home now). If I ever go back it will probably only be for a few days or maybe two weeks but never for much longer and certainly not forever which makes me sad because I will never hike those moors again and all I want to do right now is pull my hair back, grab and apple when the hostel cafeteria staff lady isn't looking and hike 18 miles or so on the Pennine Way with 30 of the best people on this earth. England is all I can think about and dream about and it makes my writing redundant and my life unsatisfactory and I miss England. This cloister-knock off isn't English. It needs grass instead of stone, for one thing. And the table I'm sitting at shaded by an umbrella will have to go. Only stone benches. The fountain can stay but it will need to be less modern-arty and more Baroque. All the offices and classes need medieval-izing as well. All these trees in stone planters are way out (it's a little horrifying to think about). No. No-this place is nice but the vending machines don't have Cadbury and my purse has quarters and dimes in it and I have make-up on and I'm not in England any more and the trip I worked for and dreamed about and anticipated is gone in the blink of an eye. Two months ago today, actually, I was on an airplane. Absurd. I relate all the days now to what I was doing in England at the time. Life is supposed to be greener on the other side, but in this case it actually is.

August 23rd

I heard two girls in the Wilk today using very fake British accents and it made me mad. Considering that I could hardly claim to be an authority on all things British (though heaven knows I've tried), particularly with accents, I probably shouldn't talk but they were fake and I was offended and my thought was "I could do better". Pride. And there really is a difference between the movement and action and gesture habits between Brits and Americans. Something less of a strut and more poise...or maybe a different kind of strut (because there is definitely still a strut).

See. It's all I write about. I swear it's not all I think about-I think about many things. But turning on my writing brain seems to generate my England brain on auto pilot and once I start it's the death of me. I wish I could rewind and do it again. But it won't do to dwell on it. From where I sit now I won't ever get my fill of England. Unless I moved there and got a job and had to pay taxes and things-but I won't go back in the way I did and that hurts almost more than the thought of going back. Two weeks isn't enough! And the odds of really living there aren't really great. Maybe I'll go to grad school there.

I found out today that after two years my parents are dismantling my room and painting it and giving it to my younger brother. I think I'd have been alright with it if it had been my sister. She belongs to a room of girlish little dreams and goals and ambitions but now those dreams are being painted over and Wendy has officially been kicked out of the nursery. That part of my life is being packed away into boxes. I don't know if I even want to go home for Christmas because my room-my beloved room with the beautiful window and canopied bed-won't ever be mine again. It will have dirty moldy towels on the floors and footballs in the corners.

I knew it!

You Belong in the UK

Blimey! A little proper, a little saucy. You're so witty and charming... No one notices your curry breath

What English Speaking Country Are You?

It's a Marshmallow World...

In August?

Alright. Story time. I have a very boring job (that officially ends TOMORROW!) that involves me entering information into a computer all day. I talk to no one. I sit in my box and look at a screen all day. You kind of start getting the feeling that eventually you'll hit the right combination of keys on the keyboard and someone will run by and give you some cheese or a Scooby Snack. So I do any number of things to keep myself occupied throughout the day to forget how boring everything is. I munch on almonds and have a kind of routine that I keep-I listen to a movie in the morning on a portable DVD player with the screen down so I don't look like I'm watching instead of working-a movie I know really well helps pass the time rather quickly. I listen to music on my iPod on shuffle so I get a good mix of musicals and classical and more up-beat type stuff, and I listen to books on tape that I know really well (Harry Potter, Ender's Game), so that when I zone out and stop listening I don't get confused when I come back in. I change my music in and out fairly frequently so I don't start listening to the same stuff over and over and over again. So I was getting near the end of listening to Ender's Game and I decided to put Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on just in case I finished. I have all my books on their own playlist in itunes so that I don't have to have it on my iPod all the time-so I suppose you could imagine my surprise when about two hundred Christmas songs from my collection made their way on to my iPod. I was listening to songs on shuffle when all of the sudden I heard "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" by Andy Williams. I was completely confused. What in the-I hadn't added Christmas music! I love Christmas and all, but I don't listen to Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving when I start putting up decorations and looking for trees. Shame on me though-I broke my rule and listened to nearly every Christmas song that came through in the shuffle because it was exactly the change I needed and put me in such a good mood that it didn't matter how ridiculous it was. Christmas music makes me so happy. It has a kind of smell to it-a sound and feel associated with every Christmas memory I've ever had. Like picking out the tree with my mom and driving around to look at lights-caroling in full Dickens-dress with the cast of the Hale's version of A Christmas Carol...walking home in the snow from work when it's just me and the street lights and feeling all romantic about it until I get home and realize my mascara's run and I look like a raccoon instead of the snow-queen I've imagined for myself. All the Californians who come to Provo in the winter can back off as far as I'm concerned. I love winter and I can't wait for snow.

Because it is Discernible

I saw the latest attempt at Austen tonight (Becoming Jane) with my mom and my aunt. I was hoping that the movie would be great-mostly because I enjoy (almost) every Austen like movie. There was something lacking in this film though. I think I was hoping for some kind of cross between Finding Neverland and Sense and Sensibility or the latest Pride and Prejudice films-a film that is beautiful and trusts its audience to follow the trail. A film so breath taking that you feel literally sucked in by the scenery and forget you're watching a movie at all. A movie that, in a sense-breaks that fourth wall between screen and movie-goer. Becoming Jane made a very valiant effort at this-there was superb casting of the supporting cast and nice costumes-enough farm animals and woods to make it an official costume drama-but it was lacking. I didn't care. I know how the romance ended. The suspense of the romance wasn't enough for me. Granted, most people who see the film will know little of Austen's life and eat up the fictional with the reality-but as someone who does know a thing or two about Austen and has read the letters that this half true biography-made movie is based on...it was a little disappointing. For one thing it was hard to follow. The film was choppy-it suffered from horrible editing. I'd like to see the movie again just so I can pick up on what was going on for the first half of the movie when I didn't know which character was which. It felt like it was trying too hard at times-like when they had a montage of Jane walking through the ball looking for ...something or someone. You assume it's the love interest but we don't know the character the movie has created well enough to go beyond the assumption. There was very little character development.

This wasn't supposed to be a movie review. I'll cut to the chase.

The biggest thing that was lacking to me was the light I imagine in Austen's eye. She strikes me as the kind of person (at least from reading her books and her letters to her sister etc.) who has the idea that all of the people around her are there for her own amusement. She did not always have a happy life, but I feel like she would have been a lot more self assured and amused with life in general than she was portrayed as in the movie. Maybe it was just me being unable to get past the typically American performance from Hathaway-but I really think that there was a kind of light completely missing from Hathaway's eyes.

I've been thinking pretty seriously about the last semester or so of my sophomore year at school and a good portion of this summer about how depressed I've been. I haven't been able to force myself out of it. For whatever reason I have been miserable almost all the time. When I haven't been depressed I've been faking happiness. There aren't all that many times I can think that I have been truly happy in the last year. Most of it I think is due in part to me not being comfortable with myself. I lived with roommates last semester who always seemed to be doing better academically/socially/emotionally than me and I didn't know who to turn to. My two best friends had boyfriends and (this is my fault) because I didn't really take the time to go out and find people to get to know, my social life was almost nonexistent. As I said-this was mostly my fault. It was easier to stay in my room doing homework or reading a book or watching a movie on my own because they are all things that I enjoy doing. But I wasn't happy. I would have moments of real enjoyment but, thinking back, I think a lot of the light kind of dimmed in me on a more regular basis than normal.

So I've been researching light. Not so much in the scientific sense as the spiritual sense, especially in the scripture that talks about light being good because it makes things discernible. I suppose this relates to truth, in a way-in that all truth (however gruesome it might be) has an element of light in it. For the studying I've been doing, I've been focusing mainly on the topical guide in the scriptures and old talks logged away on lds.org-I've been surprised in this hodge-podge research on how many different ways the scriptures/leaders of the church have referred to light. They refer to it in reference to talents and truth and example and warmth and intelligence and the Savior and ourselves...so many different ways and they are all kind of related and not related at the same time.

This is too long, and you don't need to know all the details to my struggles or current mindset-it's all pretty personal and something I'm working out with the Lord-but if you get the chance read "The Light in Their Eyes" by James E. Faust from the October 2005 General Conference. It was an excellent talk and I've started to feel a little better about my situation and have some more hope for what the next year will bring for me. It's a great talk-read it.

Everything I hate ....

About Mormon literature in one description.

We got our Deseret Book catalogue today (or rather, my parents did) and I happened to read this description:

The Bishop's Bride By Elizabeth W Watkins

"Andrew McCammon's stake president just gave him the two biggest shocks of his life. First, he is to be the new bishop of his ward. Second, he has three weeks to meet a woman, fall in love, and get engaged. What follows is the hilarious story of delightfully bizarre events that guide the right woman to him".

?!!

Ok, seriously?!! How does stuff like this get published?! I'm sure the author is a very nice woman and I wish her every happiness but-well, the word delusional comes to mind. My bet is that he'll find a girl that doesn't fit the mold, but then they'll fall in love and he'll see her differently and learn some very valuable lessons just in time. They'll enter wedded bliss just before the last petal falls and Mrs. Potts will sing their kids a lullaby while they dance.

Not to mention that I don't know of any Stake President putting a time slot on a person to get married. What's the Stake President going to do if he doesn't find the girl in three weeks? Excommunicate him? Not let him be Bishop? Good grief. Or, to quote Fred (I think it was Fred-) "Blimey, what a waste of parchment".

Choking on the Bone

Welcome to my first post-Potter post in a while. And shockingly enough this post isn't really about Potter at all (shocking I know)-though, to be fair, it is inspired by a quote I read today in an interview with JK Rowling. She was talking about the major themes in the books and said something to the effect of how what she likes to look at in characters is what decent people do when they're frightened-and how much she values the virtue of courage.

When I was in England earlier this summer we got into lots of discussions on risk taking. I don' t really consider myself a risk taker-I think I've written about this before. I usually take the safe route. I stay in my room on weekends instead of going out to meet people more often than not.

I've had lots of interesting varied thoughts on courage and bravery today-I was listening to You've Got Mail today at work (I listen to movies while I enter information into a computer) and there's a line in there where Kathleen wonders if she is the way she is because she likes it or because she hasn't been brave. And then through a series of frustrating events I found myself back in that pit of depression that comes after I have a streak of ambition that I can't do anything about. I had so many great plans for myself after I came home from England-I felt as though I had really made some emotional progress. I was ready to take on the world and be the person I've wanted the strength to be-and then I got back and everything I wanted for myself blew up in my face in the space of about...72 hours. Give or take. I spent half the afternoon at work thinking about my summer and how I have gone from one extreme of feeling that everlasting yea to another feeling everlasting no (look up the reference).

But I've decided that I don't want to feel down any more. My last semester at school was miserable and I don't want this summer to be that way either. So after thinking about that quote and then reading Jo's interview, I decided to look up some quotes on courage to see if I could get a better definition of what it was. Because there are pretty varied definitions-the thesaurus lumps it up alongside words that don't necessarily feel like they would always go up next to each other-faith and recklessness for example. Coolness and certainty alongside aggressiveness and daring. In other words, the definition of courage is still a little up for grabs. Or at least what people associate courage with.

So I looked up some quotes on courage instead-since that is what I do-I'm a quote person. And I found a lot of good (if somewhat contradictory) quotes on courage. I found a few main themes though-for instance, most people agree that courage doesn't exist if there is no opposition. Simple enough. Some people point out that the best kind of courage exists in small doses in day to day things, and others talk of those who aren't afraid to stand on their own. Some say courage is the absence of fear, others say that courage is the conquest of it. I haven't fully come to my own conclusions on courage yet, but I'm hoping that further study/experience may gear me up to make the changes I want in my life possible in this next semester. In the meantime-chew on a few of these quotes and come to your own conclusions.

Alan Cohen: It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

Buckminster Fuller: Dare to be naive.

Charles Dubois: The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.

Eleanor Roosevelt: You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

Teddy Roosevelt: It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910

Winston Churchill: Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

And because I can't go one post without mentioning Harry...a week ago this very minute I was opening my copy of book seven. Chapter one, page one. Sad! I want that night back!

"All was well"

General Warning: This post is about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. If you have not finished the book, get off the computer and go read it. Shame on you for being here. If you have finished, bravo: continue. Spoilers ahead. You have been warned.






This will be one of probably two posts on this book. I haven't quite digested it all yet-I want to re-read the book and take it all in before I really post. For now I think I'll address my predictions and general perceptions of the book.

I was pretty pleased with how well I did in predicting. And those things that I didn't get right I either couldn't have guessed (what the Deathly Hallows really were), or had logical explanations for (Harry as a Horcrux, Neville dying)-so I'll give myself a pat on the back. Because I can and because none of you are around to glare at me or roll your eyes at me for being such a snot.

Harry as a Horcrux was something I started to think about more seriously as the book went on so that by the end I was half convinced of it. Most of that was because of the way the locket behaved. The locket seemed to have a kind of life of its own. It reacted to what was going on. Why this spurred the thought I don't know-but I started to think that maybe the very reasons I thought Harry couldn't be a Horcrux also supported the theory, in a way. I hadn't considered that the connection between the two of them (Harry and Voldemort) would be a literal one, not just an emotional one. I also didn't think that Horcruxes could be accidents-the description of how they're made makes it sound as though it has to be fairly deliberate. But, there it is. It worked because it went the way Orson Scott Card predicted-he was able to live because he gave himself willingly and because of his love (he was thinking about Ginny. *peals of triumphant laughter). Speaking of sacrificial lambs-anyone else catch the blatant Christian symbolism? I hope so.

Neville living worked out for me too-even though I was completely convinced of him dying right up to the end. I liked that he had a pretty good handle on himself in this book. He was able to really come into his own-and even killed the snake which was excellent. Horray for Neville! I'm glad that the six DA-Ministry people from the fifth book are still in tact.

I like the shades of gray Jo brings up in the book. The Malfoys aren't really evil or good. They don't fight on either side, because they decide that they value their family more than anything. I liked shading Dumbledore's past too-it made him more human. And it gave room to bring Harry above his hero (hooray for the hero's journey!)

I liked that Harry didn't end up killing Voldemort directly in the end. It keeps him pure and is another way that pulls Harry above Dumbledore.

Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione at the end. I think I died of cuteness. Freaking adorable! And bittersweet too. Lots of this book seemed almost self-indulgent to me on Jo's part-certainly necessary for the plot but also a little of her just needing to say good-bye. I thought it was sad to see Harry say good-bye to Privet Drive-an acknowledgment of how far he has come from being this kid who finds out he's a wizard one day to this. I thought the end was symbolic too-Harry sending his boy off to school-the circle comes back. And ending it at a train station where it all began-not just for us, but for Jo as well. Beautiful. Only this time, Harry's surrounded by his family and friends-and, as Jo says-there has been peace for 19 years. If Ron's learning to drive a Muggle car then things have to have improved in wizard/Muggle relations.

The symbolism of the houses was still there in the Horcruxes too-another thing that made me incredibly happy. Thanks to Harry being tied with Gryffindor, that is.

Snape/Lily was interesting to me-something that I hadn't really wanted, really-mostly because in the fan fiction world every Maurader-era fic typically revolves in which Maurader/Snape is in love with Lily and it gets on my nerves because it feels so Mary-Sue. The only one I ever found interesting was the Snape/Lily idea, but I had issues seeing it until Jo explained it better. I hadn't ever seen Snape as most people write him-someone poisoned by forbidden love who turns into a Muggle-hater because James got there first-it was too simple. Too typical. Having him like Lily but still have issues with the Muggle-born thing made him more interesting. It was excellent and tragic all at once. No wonder he hates Harry right off the bat-imagine seeing your enemy's child-the perfect reincarnation of the enemy with your lover's eyes? Talk about insult to injury. The eyes of a person are so much more difficult than a nose or mouth or something. Harsh.

Did anyone catch blatant world war two references? Yikes. Creepy. Some of this book gave me chills it was so disgusting. Having to prove your relations? Muggle Studies turning into a kind of Hitler-Youth thing? Yikes. All the way around, yikes.

The book was so symbolic at times it was ridiculous. This book, of all of them, felt like it was important to us, considering the state of the world. One line that hit me was at the end of the fifth chapter when Hermione says "Harry, he's taking over the Ministry and the newspapers and half the Wizarding world! Don't let him inside your head too!" (pg 85, US). Well. Call me obsessive for trying to make everything in this world relate to my many fictional ones but that one doesn't seem so far fetched. Sunday school lessons on dealing with the devil anyone?

Well, I'll be back with more after I've fully digested everything-but it's been an incredible ride, hasn't it? I pulled my copy of book one off my bookshelf last night after finishing the book and flipped through the pages. We've come a long way. It's hard to imagine, really-hard to fathom over. It's been amazing. Jo-there aren't words to express how I'm feeling right now. My sincerest thanks.

Broken Record

I said I'd be back with more Harry Potter movie reviewing but after reading Orson Scott Card's review of the movie I don't feel the need to, since the man has (and much more eloquently than I could, I might add) said exactly what I wanted to say. So rather than give a more in depth viewing of the movie analysis after my second time around, I'm going to do what we did through all of England on our study abroad: synthesize everything. Or bobbette everything if you want the other vocab word.

I learned in England not to go anywhere without paper, especially to plays and movies and concerts and things because if I didn't have a notebook handy I'd forget what I wanted to say. It's easy enough to make those notes in classes or on campus-or other places when there aren't stories to follow but seeing plays without a notebook is hard-there's too much going on to remember that one line that you liked or the one scene that touched you. As a result, I've written down the lines that got to me in one way or another when I watched the movie today.

Like OSC says, it's interesting how intelligent this movie is. There's so much there to consider. This movie touched me in ways the book didn't. The book is so laced with humor that, at times, I don't know if I really felt the seriousness of the situation. Or the cruelty. Seeing is different than reading though-I'm thinking particularly of two scenes that were in the book. The first is the detention scene with Harry-that first one when you first see Umbridge's satisfied smile and the words being etched on Harry's hand. Goodness...you know, I love Umbridge as a character. she's a brilliant villain. Reading her makes me admire Jo's ability to create two toned characters that are both humorous and villainous-really meaty characters you can sink your teeth into. But seeing her made me feel sick inside. That scene unnerved me in ways that it didn't when I read it. Maybe this is because I'm thinking more about becoming a teacher and have all these massive ideas on what public education should be-but hearing Umbridge tell Harry that "you know deep down inside you deserve to be punished"-ugh. The other scene was seeing Trelawny be sacked. A good portion of this is probably because the director decided to take the scene seriously-I seem to remember it being slightly comical in the book-but Emma Thompson is so brilliant that seeing her half trip over her suitcase made that sick feeling come back. Harry is right when he tells Hermione that whatever "this" is, it isn't simple.

These books are much more complex than people give them credit for. Yes, they're housed in the children's section, but they don't deserve to be any more, I don't think. Or people should stop thinking of them simply as children's literature. Like it's degrading. Think of how many incredible children's books there are out there that teach really powerful, deep lessons-much better than any serialized romance or crummy thriller you'd find in the regular Fiction section. Charlotte's Web and Bridge to Terabithia, for example-they deal very seriously with what it is to have friendship and what it means to face death. The Giver. Tuck Everlasting. The Boxcar Children. All these books about children who are faced with really serious situations and decisions-whether or not to drink a water that will make you live forever or face death-how to survive without parents-and we shun them as books that don't make children think? Make people think? Harry Potter is no different. People shun them aside as children's literature in the worst sense of the phrase because they are fantasy and involve children-but these books make people think in ways that I would wager more than half the books in the fiction section at Barns and Noble could.

This movie brings some of those themes out-I definitely left the theater both times with things to consider. Take two of the lines from the movie for example-Umbridge telling her class that they'll learn about defense in a "secure risk free environment" and Sirius saying "what's life without a bit of risk". We had lots of discussion about risk on our study abroad. I'm not a really risky person. I am, in a way since I do theater-every audition is a risk-but I don't really see it in that way any longer because it's something I just do. So what are they saying about risk? Because neither way is really the right way. Living life without risk or too much risk isn't what Jo is promoting here-or the film for that matter. We see where Sirius and Umbridge end up. Where is the medium?

The movie did some really great things with developing Harry's character that I loved particularly. The scene at the end when he gives his speech to Voldemort (kind of reminded me of Moses 1 in the Pearl of Great Price...was that blasphemous?)-at the end of it he says "I feel sorry for you (Voldemort)". After all he's been through, afraid that he's becoming his enemy-he expresses sorrow for him. It's Frodo admitting he feels bad for Smeagol/Gollum. Brilliant. The other bit I really liked was Harry's speech on how all the greatest wizards were children once-and if they can do it, then so can the DA. I love that because I love thinking about the power of youth. I think lots of this is because I felt so much more grown up than I was when I was younger. My emotions were very real to me. I wanted to be taken seriously. So when I see kids doing what I wanted to do-create a symbolic DA of sorts and be able to fight against adults and win-I get really excited. It's why I loved Matilda so much. It isn't bashing on adults-it's not denying the feelings and emotions and intelligence of children, who really do understand much more than most people give them credit for because we're told to sugar coat everything.

Spiritually the part of the movie that touched me most was the idea that Harry has where he thinks he's becoming Voldemort. I think we're a little too hard on ourselves as members of the church sometimes. We really are a bunch of transcendentalists, in a way-there's a lot of emphasis on perfecting yourself. I think we sometimes get really focussed-or at least I do-on what it is we're doing wrong. Because we focus so much on these things we aren't good at, I think we assume that God does too. But I think we give ourselves too little credit. Dumbledore says it later in the film-it isn't what makes us like (Voldemort/Satan)-it's what makes us different. It's the times when we do live up to our own expectations, and succeed. It's when our intentions are pure. We focus so much on exactness that we forget mercy-we forget that God wants us home more than anything.

Anyway. That's enough Harry Potter for now. Good grief-it's all I blog on now. Mostly this is because I don't have anything else of interest going on. I don't want to write about how stressful selling my contract is because then I'd have to think about it some more.

My sister was baptized today-it's crazy because I remember when she was born and thinking I would be twenty when she got baptized. That's pretty old for a twelve year old. I remember thinking I could be married or dating someone at that point (so much for that)-and here it is. It was a pretty emotional day. I won't go into all the details or the background on it, but it was incredible to see her. There was a baby picture of her in the program right next to one of her now-forgive me while I wax sentimental for a second-I love my family. Having everyone in my family together is something of a luxury now with me at school most of the time and my brothers always out with friends and my dad with work and...it's a rare occasion. We've been through the mill as a whole family in the last few months with problems that don't need to be shared with the world, but let me just say that seeing my family come together today really reminded me of how it can (and should) be-and how grateful I am for the gospel.

Two thumbs up. And a wand.

I don't have time to give the whole review now-partly because I have so much reading to do and only a bit of time to do it before I go to bed. I've got about two days left to finish Order of the Phoenix if I want to keep on schedule and yesterday put me behind. Not that I didn't get my dose of it anyway. I'd like to wait until I see the movie again before I do a full review anyway. This review will, therefore, be somewhat scattered and random.

1. FINALLY a director that knows what he's doing. The transitions worked so well. How do you condense an 870 page book into a two hour and fifteen (ish) minute movie? That's about the same length as the Prisoner of Azkaban film. Well, for starters, you pick one part of the storyline and run with it. Which is what he did. Order of the Phoenix has lots of detail in it-detail that is necessary in a complex book but not as necessary in a less complex/wordy venue such as a film. The details that needed to be there were kept. Those that weren't were scrapped.

2. Screenwriter-I'm in love with this man. It's about time someone realized that the dialogue Jo creates is good the way it is. So many of my favorite one liners made the cut! Horray!

3. The movie stands on its own, but still gives plenty of nods to those of us who comb through the books-the scene in the underground with Mr. Weasley. Kingsley and Tonks-you know who they are if you haven't read the books, but those of us who have appreciate that they are there. I disagree with Liz on this-on Kreacher as well. It would have broken suspense and taken too much time to develop his storyline at this time. Besides-I get the feeling that Kreacher's importance isn't so much in this fooling of Harry as it is in book seven, but I guess we'll see later on. Jo reads over these scripts and as far as I'm concerned, she wouldn't let them do anything really drastic.

4. Luna! I disagree with Liz here too-Luna was funny and profound at the same time. It was perfect, because she is that way in the books too. Really-a lot of what she says in the books is quite profound, but it's masked with humor. Still though-she's a Ravenclaw. She's smart. And you get the feeling that she really lives in her own world. She doesn't care what people think of her, but she's not bitter about it in the way some people are.

5. Ginny-she rocks. Period.

The movie just felt like a movie. It didn't feel like it was joking around, it felt like it was taking itself seriously. Like the people who made it really wanted it to be good film-wise, not just good in the Harry Potter verse.

I thought the cuts they made were decent cuts. The business with expanding on the prophecy for example-all of that is necessary in the book because Harry's character is developed more. So much of five is internal that Harry needs to have all the extra stuff about the prophecy being important because Voldemort makes it important, and Dumbledore having heard it but-really-do we need it? Not really. Not in the film-verse. Because for the film-going crowd this is the Empire Strikes Back. This is Luke being like-ok. I know I've got to fight the bad guy now and destroy him. No, it isn't as meaty or as developed as the book is, but it's all you need. Anyway-I'm going to see the movie again and come back with more.

For now just don't try and argue with me. I'm sick of all my friends whining about what wasn't in the film. Come on, people. Get over it. I was surprised at how faithful they were to the book in the end. As opposed to the other films, more of this film came strait from the book.

In brighter less annoyed news-only ten days until seven comes out!

Double Feature (and a little extra)

These last two Scholastic questions are a little ridiculous, so I'll be brief. Or as brief as I ever am. Then I have to reply to Ebert's review of the fifth movie (and give my token guide to watching the movie lecture).

Question six: Will Voldemort be defeated?

Seriously? Ok. Fine.

885,943.

Know what that number is? That is (according to my calculator and the numbers The Lexicon gave me) the number of words contained in the first six books of the series. This isn't including the number of words in the school books, the interviews, or (presumably) the correct number of words for the books when published in other languages (or even the Brit/American versions). I'm assuming that the word count is probably from the US versions and since those are the versions most of us read on this side of the pond, that's the number we'll use. The next book will (judging by the length of four and six) be somewhere around 170,000 more words-easily putting the number of words in the series past a million.

And they are telling me that after all of this reading and re reading and agony over waiting (for five especially) that the point of the books would fail? Good grief.

Yes. Voldemort will be defeated. Otherwise we've all wasted so much of our time. Seriously-if, theoretically, Harry dies and Voldemort lives than what is JKR saying? This whole time she's been saying that good will conquer evil in the end, and that our choices determine our fate, and etc. etc. etc. and if all that is reversed...what a lame question. Boo on Scholastic. I should have expected it though-I've never been really impressed with Scholastic's take on the books. Mostly because they gear their questions and trivia contests towards the 9-12 year old range of readers (which they shouldn't at this point-but that's another soap box for a little later on). Scholastic drives me nuts with the lack of research they do. But then-I research to absurd degrees because I'm strange like that. This is why I wrote so many trivia questions myself for the last Potter Party I worked at Barns and Noble.

I've left my point. The question, I guess, isn't so much whether or not Voldemort will die, or just be sent to wallow. Dumbledore talks about how there are fates worse than death and that he fails to recognize this, but because he is so afraid of it, and because he has already done the "undead" thing before, it's time for him to die. Shockingly, (or maybe not), this is the one question that people seem to agree on with intelligence in the poll-80% or so say that he'll die. Bravo. Now to deal with the randomness in the other half of the 'who will live/die' poll where the same 80% say that he'll live. (eh?)

Question Seven is "What are the Deathly Hallows". I'm pretty sure I went into manic detail on this earlier on when the title was released...the difference between 'hallows' and 'hollows' and all. This question is another kind of lame one because it's something that is almost unguessable. It's the whole point of book seven, really-discovering what they are. If we knew much about them already then the point of seven would be half lost. I would bet that "Deathly Hallows" probably has a double meaning from what we know now-hallows can be places, nights/events (Halloween, for example), or things. My favorite description is one from the Lexicon-they point out that 'deathly' is sometimes used synonymous with 'deadly' but that more often it is used in reference to something that is subject to death as opposed to something that inflicts or causes death. The ancient use of 'hallows' was in reference to relics of saints. They believed that the saints themselves were housed in the relics-a fairly decent connection between Voldemort and the Horcruxes. But it's all speculation at this point, because finding out about the Horcruxes and where they are is the point of the next book.

So Ebert gave a rather ridiculous review of the movie-mostly because he's shocked about how dark it is...sigh. Fortunately for anyone who has read the book, the review should be a screaming endorsement of the movie, because between the lines he more or less confirms that the movie has been true to the tone of the book, which is very dark. JKR said in an interview once that the book had to be dark, and that ”...A psychologically plausible child would have been institutionalized by now, having gone through all this. He’s suffered and tolerated so much.’ “ (The Leaky Cauldron, 10 July 2007)

So in other words, the movie should be great. It has the highest rating a Potter film has ever had on Rotten Tomatoes. I was reading through comments on one of the posts at Rotten Tomatoes forum on the movie and heard probably the best piece of advise on watching the movie ever-don't spend all your time looking for what isn't there. Enjoy what is there, don't even try the 'it ruined the book' line (the book will still be there), and if you're anything like me, bring a hankie. I'm such a wimp.

Now that I'm done with the Scholastic questions, I think I'll move on to just random book commentary...I'm in the middle of re-reading five and I'll read six next week-I want to do a post on education theories after reading some of Umbridge again (quotes on how the ministry system of education doesn't allow for people to voice opinions on things they don't know about...etc).

But that's going to have to wait. Because I have a ticket at the IMAX with my name on it. And I'll sit in the back row so the kid behind me doesn't vomit all over again. That was nasty. Nothing will get in the way of my enjoying Harry Potter mania while I still can.

Oh boy. I'm such a nerd...it's a good thing I learned to accept the fact...

Where, oh where have the horcruxes gone?

The fifth question posed by Scholastic is "Where are the Horcruxes?". I'm going to use this as a small excuse to expound on some of my more brilliant Voldemort and Snape insights ;)

First of all, one thing Jo mentioned (or rather, hasn't mentioned) is the significance of the look Dumbledore gets on his face after Harry comes out of the maze in book four-after Harry has related the story of the graveyard to him in his office. Harry tells him that Voldemort took some of his blood and then Dumbledore gets a look of triumph on his face. We know it's significant (see numerous evasive interviews), but she hasn't explained why. Here comes the brilliant insight-Voldemort having Harry's mother's blood running through him does allow him to touch Harry-but it does also give him traces of that love he despises so much. He's taken into himself some of the power that destroyed him in the first place. Wouldn't that make him easier to kill the second time around? He is both strengthened and weakened by the stuff...

As for Snape (I was listening to the end of book 4 at work today), I think I have further proof as to why he would be on the good side. It's at the end when Dumbledore and Fudge are having their spat about whether or not Fudge should get rid of the dementors/admit Voldy is back/etc. when all of the sudden Snape rips back the sleeve of his robes and shoves the Dark Mark into Fudge's face in an attempt to convince him to take Dumbledore's advice. Why would he do that if he was on Voldemort's side? It wasn't necessary, really. He didn't need to prove to Fudge that he was on the good side, Fudge already believed it. So did Dumbledore. It was a blatant attempt on his side to convince Fudge that Voldemort was back. Why would he do that if he was on Voldemort's side? Having Fudge live in denial is what Voldemort wants-it's why he lays low for virtually all of book five. If Snape was working for Voldemort or intending to turn to his side again, why would he do such a thing?

Anyway. Onward and upward.

Horcruxes. Interesting things, aren't they? Kind of morbid. What do we know about them (or think we know-Dumbledore could be wrong)-there should be seven total (including the one still in LV)-two are destroyed (ring-representing his pure blood ancestry, and diary-representing his years at Hogwarts). That leaves four tokens left, plus the big man himself. Some people suspect that there are more than this, but I doubt it. Jo has said that she considers 7 a 'powerfully magical number'. It's symbolic in many ways-eight just doesn't have the same weight. So laboring under the assumption that there are four (plus one) left for Harry to destroy, and Dumbledore was right about the cup and the locket-we've got two variables.

Dumbledore suggested that he thought Nagini might be an interesting option for a Horcrux, but I doubt it somehow. Voldemort does have curious control over her, but he is like that with most people that aren't horcruxes-and it seems so unlikely that he would put his trust in putting a horcrux in something that's living and has the capability to get away from him (even if the chance is small). It just doesn't feel right. Nagini is a mortal snake-it does not seem likely that he would place a bit of his soul into something that could die. Not to mention the significance of having the remaining four horcruxes come from the houses of the founders-it ties together the significance of the school rather nicely. Besides-one of the most important parts of the hero's journey is the part where the apprentice overcomes the master-it happens when Frodo is able to destroy the ring and Bilbo/Isildur couldn't-it happens when Luke is able to overcome the Emperor/Vader when his father/Obi wan (respectively) were not. It's an important part. Harry has to discover some of this on his own. Which is why I hold to the theory that we have the locket (Slytherin's, and either at Grimmauld still or scattered by Dung-the prat), the cup (Hufflepuff's-the location is not known, but the cup is said to have some magical powers of it's own that we don't know about).

Is Harry a Horcrux? No. No. No. Orson Scott Card has a really interesting theory in favor of this that seems rather interesting-it would be symbolic for Harry to be able to survive and destroy the horcrux inside him with the love that runs through him-but I don't agree any more. That symbolism can be achieved in other ways. It just doesn't seem likely. The little we know about how Horcruxes are made works against it. We know they are created with murder. We know that it is very deep, dark, difficult magic that is deliberately done (wow. consonance). Voldemort would not have been in any state to do so after he tried killing Harry the first time. And then there is the issue of Voldemort trying (unsuccessfully) to kill him five times now (when he was a baby, with the philosopher's/sorcerer's stone incident, in the Chamber of Secrets, in the graveyard, at the Ministry). Why would he kill something he's put a horcrux in? And then there's the question of love inside Harry-how could a piece of Voldemort's soul live inside Harry when he is so full of love for various people-the Weasley's....Ginny, Hermione, Sirius, Dumbledore, his parents...etc. etc. etc.? Voldemort can't stand to possess him long when they're in the Ministry-it doesn't seem likely that a piece of his soul could either. He could have unwittingly put one in Harry but...no. Just ...no.

So where are they? Well-let's think of what we know.

We know that one was in Hogwarts already (the diary). We also know that it wasn't put there by Voldemort-it was brought there by Lucius via. Ginny. We (think) we know that the locket is (or was) at Grimmauld Place. So while I think it's safe to assume that most of these remaining bits of Voldemort's soul will be in the place he intends them to be, it is possible that we will come across them in insignificant places (or places that they weren't intended to be). I would venture a guess that there is another Horcrux in the Hogwarts area-Hogwarts was so important to Voldemort it would seem a little ridiculous not to have one there-granted Dumbledore has probably done some searching, but he's been wrong before. The Riddle House was a murder location/his father's home/his temporary home at the beginning of book four-there could be one there. What about the orphanage itself? What other places were particularly important to Voldemort before he tried to kill Harry? It feels like we still need information about him before we can make that assessment. His life is still pretty sketchy. He worked at Borgin and Burkes for a while but I wouldn't bet on one being there-too likely that it would be sold by the greedy shop owners. Though he could have hidden it fairly well. I would also bet that there could be one somewhere in Gringotts- I don't know how special/significant this would be in terms of Voldemort's past, but it is supposed to be the safest place to keep something next to Hogwarts, and we learned a ton about it in book one that has been virtually ignored since then. It would be a pretty brilliant place to store a horcrux. It has a built in security system. There isn't a ton we can do with this information based on what we know of Voldemort's past-I think most of this will just have to wait for discovery in the next book...which is two weeks away! I will have it in my greedy little hands two weeks from now exactly. Scary.

While I'm on this track-a word of warning to you all (wherever you are)-our local paper published yet another reminder of how awful Death Eaters can be (some people call them 'the worst sort of Muggle'...I like to be a little more mean)-be wary of those who would spoil the book for you if you care. Avoid the internet, television, radio etc. until you've finished the book. People will do nasty things like make up login names revealing the dead characters/shout who dies out loud to people in the bookstore/make signs/t-shirts...everything. It's horrible. Granted, this book is fraught with death so I doubt any nay-sayers will be able to ruin everything but all the same, I plan to go armed with headphones and really loud music to escort me away from the bookstore and back to my bedroom, where I will proceed to barricade myself with some popcorn and Dr. Pepper for company (and maybe a chamber pot to save myself time...only joking)-until I have safely finished the book and my emotional purge. I didn't think such a thing would be necessary until the newspaper gave every obnoxious teen in my town the idea, but there it is. I'm not taking any chances this time. Blinders on-earphones in-eyes on the prize. You have been warned.

Love is in the aiiiiirr....

In the Harry Potter-verse anyway. My life is full of all kinds of love from friends who are engaged and in that particular kind of bliss and none from the 'I have a love interest of my own' camp. Being single is too much work for me to bother with love of my own.

And besides. This isn't dedicated to my own scanty love life. It is dedicated to the rather more interesting speculations on the love lives of fictional characters! Yay!! Living vicariously through other people is the best. I would know.

Ok. So unless otherwise noted, these are all going to be assuming that the characters live. And I'm only going to write about the ones I care about, I think. Furthermore, we're going to labor under the assumption that "who ends up with whom" implies a romantic relationship, to be called 'ship' from this point onwards. Because that's the lingo and part of the purpose of this is to educate the uneducated in the language of Harry Potter mania. The "Good Ship Harmony" for example is the nick name for people in favor of a Harry/Hermione hook up. If you want to know what I think of their kind...

Alright. Here it goes. *Will try to keep passion under control*

Harry/Hermione-besides the fact that this ship is DEAD (as Jo killed it in the LeakyMug interview that was published after book six came out), it could never work. Harry describes Hermione several times as "not as good as Ron" when he's fighting with Ron. He likes her, and he thinks she's relatively good looking, but he never has the same reaction physically/emotionally towards Hermione that he does for either Cho or Ginny. He talks about Hermione in a matter of fact kind of way. And Hermione is never able to calm Harry down when he is upset. She aggravates him more, if anything. No...Harry and Hermione would never work. End of story. Don't try and argue with me. It's not canon anyway. Jo killed it. It's dead. Move on. I will say though, I get a really big kick out of people still hanging on to this ship for dear life-Muggle Net isn't my favorite website for Harry Potter news but they do have a good email section-several people emailed Emerson (the owner) shortly after the interview was published with anger over what he said and what Jo said, going so far as to blame Jo for ruining her own books. Riiiiiight.

This brings us on tooo....

Harry/Ginny-*trumpets flaring, angel choirs singing* Ok, I'm a little biased. I LOVE this ship. Because Ginny is my hero. I adore her. And thank heaven they finally got together. You had to see it coming. Honestly. Other than the blatant parallels between James and Lily they really are suited for each other. They have been through similar lives in many ways-Ginny is treated differently in her family because she's the only girl for several generations. Harry's the boy who lived. They have both survived Lord Voldemort. Both are very powerful with magic. There's a scene in Order of the Phoenix that I love right after Harry goes into the Pensieve and sees the episode with his parents and Snape. He is upset and wants to talk to Sirius, but he doesn't tell anyone until Ginny comes along in the library and expresses concern for him. He finds himself telling her about his concerns and she offers to help him. There's a line about how he wasn't sure if it was the effect of the chocolate egg he was eating or not, but he did feel better after telling her. Ginny is, as Jo says, the perfect match for him because she has the same nerve, the have the same sense of humor, and they have the same grit, and general view on life. They compliment each other well. So they'll get married after all this is over and have lots of cute children with red hair. Hopefully Harry will realize sooner rather than later that Voldemort won't care if he and Ginny are "official" or not-he'll know how much he cares for her. They might as well just be official. Bah. Whatever. Harry needs to be noble for a little while...then they'll get married. In the epilogue. They're only 16/17 years old, for heaven's sake.

Ron/Hermione- Another 'duh'. Jo says it best in the LeakyMug interview when she says that she's been dropping anvil sized hints about them. If Ron's jealousy over Lockhart wasn't an early sign, the issue with Krum should have made things more obvious, and if that wasn't enough-then six should have done you in. Seriously. And they're good for each other. They squabble enough, but they bring out the best in each other in many other ways, and they care for each other more than they might admit to. In the way Harry and Ginny mirror Lily and James, Ron and Hermione mirror Ron's parents. After they get past (or at least learn to constructively deal with) their disagreements, they'll make a really good couple because they have talents that compliment one another. You can see them pulling out of it towards the end of six after all the mess with Lavender/Cormack is over.

Remus/Tonks- Ah! I was so excited with this at the end of six!! *dies*. It's perfect really, because Lupin needs someone cool and Tonks is definitely cool. They have to get together because he needs to carry on the legacy of the Marauders since (presumably), Peter will die. There should be one remaining Marauder. Or at least I hope so. Because I really like Lupin. And Tonks. And the multi-colored werewolf cub idea is so much cooler than the dragon/donkey cross from Shrek.

Filch/Pince-hehe...eeeeeewww...

Giant Squid/Dobby-I've heard worse.

Bellatrix/Voldemort-Ugh. No.

Dumbledore/McGonagall-Not unless McGonagall is ok sleeping with a portrait.

Rita/her Photographer Bozo-Hehehe. That's a funny picture. Baha! Ok. Enough with the bad puns.

So there it is. Why do I feel like this is some kind of strange episode of "Clarissa Explains it All"?

Answer me this question three...

The third question presented by Scholastic is, in my opinion anyway, a bit of a lame one. The third question is "Will Hogwarts Reopen". Whether or not the school officially reopens is, to me anyway, not the point. Whether or not the school reopens to the rest of the students doesn't seem like a big point to me. Hogwarts will still play a major role in the seventh book whether it's open to the general student body or not. Harry will, without doubt, return to the school. He has to. Symbolically, there is too much invested in the school for it to disappear from the charts now.

In an attempt to make this question more well researched than it is, I went to Quick Quotes via Leaky to look up any quotes from Jo on Hogwarts that might prove important. Most of the quotes have been more related to the inhabitants of the school (including the sorting hat and Peeves) and a bunch of random statistics of Hogwarts student numbers etc. Most of the quotes aren't related to the importance of the school itself as a building/symbol. The symbol of the school is undeniable-and the symbol of the houses themselves. Jo compared them to the different elements of the earth (water, fire, earth, wind for Slytherin, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw respectively). She's talked about how "Ravenclaw will have its day". She's talked about how students in each of the houses that she has named also have parentage mapped out so that she knows who has death eater parents/pure blood parents/muggle parents/etc. and that it will be important later on. She's mentioned several things in relation to the founders and the houses that seem to lead to Hogwarts remaining open, or at least important in the next book.

So in conclusion-I'll say that Hogwarts WILL reopen, on the basis of needing some convenient way to rally students and the youth in general (since Dumbledore has said many times that there is a kind of power in being young that the old ignore). Maybe a DA rehash? Hmm...But yes. Hogwarts will reopen.

And now for something completely different...

I'm really enjoying this Harry Potter blog stuff. It gives me an excuse to write what I like to talk about only with fewer annoying interruptions ;). To Dan I have only one word: delusional. If you would like to know the reference, read the Leaky/Mug interview with Jo that occurred the day after the book came out. You might be better off learning to like Ron and giving up your Harry/Hermione dreams. In fact, I think I'll do a blog on ships and why they have to work out in certain ways...hmm...how kind of Scholastic to give me that prompt for two blogs down the road!

In the mean time, I thought I would post up a bit of my better writing from England (in my opinion anyway) as a kind of explanation for what we did there and what I actually learned. My first essay is much more structured. After this first essay I was told to do nothing but stream of thought writing-something I enjoyed immensely. Read what you will-I'll post up my next Harry Potter question later tonight. Keep in mind of course, that all these essays are highly unfinished and, in some cases, not really meant for much else but my own computer. Comments are, of course, welcome.

Essay 1:

Living in the Impossible

I am sitting on a park bench outside Wordsworth’s grave. By now I have been in England for a week and many things I gawked over and thought quaint right after I arrived are now a little more normal. Driving on the left side of the road isn’t a novelty. Rhododendron bushes full of bold magenta and scarlet flowers are still beautiful, but not as exciting. I still take pictures of sheep, but not with quite so much enthusiasm as I did a few days ago. I’ve grown used to the sounds of new birds and the smell of dung that occasionally permeates through the romance of the Lake District, and I’ve started to think that I will never be going home. Six more weeks seems like an eternity, and imagining myself in Utah studying for finals seems like some kind of dream instead of the reality it was ten days ago. Haven’t I lived here forever like a flower child wandering the parks and mountains in search of a muse for my writing?

Grasmere is, on all accounts, the stereotypical Britain I imagined after years of watching BBC’s Keeping Up Appearances with my parents. The houses have flower boxes. The pubs are called things like “The Kings Head”. The roads are narrow, winding, and lined with stone walls. Nearly every house has a garden with a rhododendron bush growing in the yard. Men with plaid caps and women with shopping bags-it feels like the town that didn’t grow up because it’s frozen in time like a postcard. Just when I thought that Grasmere couldn’t become any more stereotypical, a little robin lands on my bench, just inches from my arm. He’s a small, curious little thing. I can see his heart beating underneath his crest of red and dirty brown feathers. He stays on the bench for a minute or so, preening for me a little, then hops down on the ground. I smile at his cheek, and open my bag to pull out my journal to write about him. By the time I have my pen uncapped, the robin is back, this time clutching breakfast in his beak – a bug with legs still twitching in pain. I congratulate my little bird friend on his success and he leaves again after a small nod. I date the page on my journal – “4 April 2007, Grasmere, Wordsworth’s Grave” and the robin is back again, bugless and watching me with as much curiosity as I have given him.

Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of the Anne of Green Gables series, was once asked if Anne was a real character. In her journals she says that she hated to answer no to such a question, because she felt that if she did, she would turn around and see Anne staring at her because she felt so real. I feel the same way about the child that still lives in me somewhere. It is because of this that I slowly hold out my pointer and middle fingers for the robin to jump on if he chooses. I know he won’t, but I have to do it anyway. I grew up watching Mary Poppins sing duets with the red breasted robin at Jane and Michael’s window, and now I offer my company or risk feeling that I have let my child-like self down. When I was younger I would chase birds up and down the street, whistling and holding out my fingers, begging for them to land on my hand and give me a little more faith in magic. I do so now not for confirmation in magic, but because I half expect a scowl from a miniature version of me if I don’t. He doesn’t jump onto my fingers, but he doesn’t fly away this time either. I’ve intrigued him.

My little robin friend reminds me of another robin too. In the book The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgeson Burnett the snobbish Mary Lenox is charmed into civility in part through the friendship of a robin, who leads her to a key. The key unlocks a forbidden, half forgotten garden. I never had a secret garden or a robin for a friend, and I hope I was never as rude as Mary was, but I imagined myself into her shoes hundreds of times. I collected old keys and used to try and find the gate that they would open, even though most of the keys came from buildings that were long since torn down, or even across the ocean, since some of them had come from the grandfather of a friend of mine in South Africa. It wouldn’t stop me from trying. The older and more ornate the key was the better. I tried growing gardens too. Underneath the porch in the back yard of our home, I dug little holes and put seeds for carrots and peas in the ground to make them grow. I watched for weeks as the little shoots popped up out of the ground, but the poor plants were never destined for greatness. They didn’t reach anything past an inch out of the ground. I tried again with flower seeds. I tried again with little pellets of dirt I bought at the store where all you had to do was water them and you would have an instant garden, but I never met with success. Plants would see me and wither from fear.

It never mattered though. The withered plants made me sad for a while, and watching birds fly from me with fear did nothing for my ego, but the world I built in my head was better than any carrot root or a visit from a bird. In my imagination I could go anywhere and be anything I wanted. I could live in a world where anything was possible. I would fly to Neverland in my room and talk with hares over tea. I could be an Olympic gymnast or a renowned writer who made a difference in the world. I could be important. I could be something truly great.

It was seeing the robin hop around that reminded me of this feeling of infinite possibility. I remember my dream to fly both physically and metaphorically and mourn the loss of innocence that I experienced. It gave me logic and reason in place of imagination and dreams, and took away the belief I once had in myself and whether or not I will ever mean anything to anyone. Just as soon as I start to mourn the loss of my innocence I laugh at myself. Who am I kidding? I am still caught up in the world of innocence. I didn’t know what beer smelled like until I was eighteen. I am still naïve about many things most college students have known about for years. I am not simply caught up in that world, I sometimes embellish it for my own amusement. Hadn’t I spent the last week climbing mountains and pretending that it was Mount Doom instead of Ben Lomond? My world of imagination never really left because I never really wanted to give it up. If I did consent to giving it up, it would feel like giving up a part of myself that still believes I can be great.

I’m not as innocent as I was as a child any longer. I don’t believe that I can clean my room by snapping my fingers any more. I shut my window to Peter Pan a long time ago. I’ve stopped knocking on the back of every wardrobe and searching for rabbit holes. When I do find myself slipping into dreamland, however, I don’t think I’m wrong or unique any more. I think that most people need a bit of fantasy in their lives. The Lord of the Rings took the world by storm again when they were released as movies. The Harry Potter franchise has impacted more people than anyone ever would have thought possible. What is it about fantasy and dreaming that is so popular? Is there something in us that needs to dream? In one of his discussions on fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien stated that “Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode: because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker”. Does not this desire to create magic also relate to our desire to create for ourselves? We dream of being great. We dream of being wonderful.

In the parable of the talents, it is the man who hides his talent in the ground that is punished. I used to find this depressing. Why is it that the man who is given least is punished? It wasn’t fair for the men given more to be given even more still. The poor man who received only one talent was being left out. But what if this parable also related to our dreams and goals and visions for ourselves? We learn in Sunday school that we are literal children of God, destined to be Gods if we are righteous. When we try to achieve easy ends, or when we decide not to pursue great things, are we not essentially burying our talents in the dirt? It feels like we are denying our own Godliness if we do not try to reach important goals. It feels like we are denying God’s ability to help us reach our dreams. Perhaps this has little to do with imagining magical lands through wardrobes and birds that sing in harmony with me, but it does relate to an old dream of being an author. Of doing something that is important in the world, and of being a person that is unique and significant to someone somewhere in the void.

I take a picture of the robin who poses obligingly on the end of my bench before flying off to find another bug for breakfast, or perhaps to meet an unrequited lover, or to visit another bench and another writer. Our group is getting ready to leave. I put my camera and journal away, still thinking about the bird and the pleasant wave of childhood memories I’ve just had. I think about what Wordsworth would have written if he had experienced what I did, or what he would have said if he could have read my thoughts. I think about robins and hiking and the hero’s journey and fantasy and how I’ve always felt so foolish allowing my dreams to take such hold of my way of thinking and dealing with life, and then I see the robin again. He’s watching me go. I change my mind. Why should I feel foolish? If I live in a world of impossible dreams, then I am opening up several hundred more possibilities by reaching for something that feels impossible. Living in the possible isn’t enough. It isn’t courageous to accept the mundane. It’s living in impossibility that shows us what we’re made of. I leave the garden with a backwards glance towards where the robin was as I left. He isn’t there.


Essay #2 (Selections)
DAY ONE: The night is dark and damp. We’ve just heard the poet Terry Gifford give us a wonderful lecture on how he constructs his poetry. Or rather, the rest of the group has heard Terry Gifford give a wonderful lecture on how he constructs poetry. I was in the kitchen making curry for dinner. The only part of it I heard was at the very end when he pulled out a folded book that contained a series of images he made while visiting Australia. Each page contained only one image. He challenged us to try doing the same thing, so I was on the watch for images. We turned down an alleyway. The street was completely empty. Lamp posts made pools of light on damp pavement. No-not completely empty. There is a couple on the walk ahead of us. The boys lead the group across the street so that we’re not interrupting their goodbyes. I hesitate because I’m curious. The man has his forehead buried against the neck of the woman. Was she taller than him? Was she wearing heals? I don’t know. It was strange. Then she kissed his forehead and I turned away, feeling like an intruder. Something about watching romance on a movie or reading about it in a book seems displaced compared to this scene. Kisses on foreheads are supposed to mean something related to comfort or the order of things because the forehead is higher than the cheek and the man kisses the forehead because he is the man and the woman kisses the cheek because she is the woman but not on this street. On this street the woman kisses the forehead and that’s how the relationship works. I wonder about their relationship and how the dynamic works. Arms and heads and whatever else intertwined the way things are it doesn’t seem like they could be unequal exactly. I see stars. I look for stars at night because I want to fly there some day and see that they really do exist even though science says they don’t but I know better. I know that stars exist because they are God’s. I know that on one of those stars is a place where new flowers grow and new buildings are built and sciences are different and people walk backwards and the animals are in charge. I look at the stars because they should give light but don’t. Starless nights aren’t much different to me than a night full of stars except one has the stars and the other doesn’t. There are so many songs about stars that make me sick and I hate thinking about them in sappy ways because it reminds me that I’m a girl and I like to be giddy but I don’t like to feel foolish so I embrace romance and push it away, like when I watch the couple on the street and then look away because I’m intruding on something that belongs to them and not to a bunch of American tourists. I’ve developed a fascination with tea and how it tastes after I take a sip. Peppermint leaves a taste like Christmas and Lemon Ginger leaves a taste like being sick at home even though I never drank Lemon Ginger when I was sick at home because my parents don’t buy herbal tea. I like the look of the liquid in the cup and wonder about how the tea bags are put together so that every single time I drink a cup it tastes the same even though the ratio of different spices probably changes and who came up with tea anyway? Or the idea for the wheel? Maybe God didn’t talk to Adam just about naming the animals or Joseph just about interpreting dreams but told them where to find tea and wheels and dogs that make good pets and cats that can be house trained. No-it was probably earlier than that. Wheels came before Joseph and after Adam and I don’t know about the tea except the Chinese are famous for it and the English drink it all the time and I drink it because I wanted to be more English and now I really like it instead of pretending to like I did when I was twelve.

Essay #3 (Selections)

I wrote a story once late at night the night before it was due on a blind woman who liked to garden. This story was completely anti-everything-I-do-in-fiction-writing because I tend to research things to death before I write about them for fear of screwing things up but I didn’t have time to research what it was like to be blind in more detail than I already had so I just made up most of it so that it sounded good. I needed a gimmick to bring out the sensory details in my writing and I needed a way to write a story without ever saying that she was blind and just letting it be figured out as it went along. It worked pretty well as a page and a half story about a woman who could smell the difference in colors of flowers. I don’t know if such a thing is possible or not. I don’t know if it matters though. Artist’s liberty. Harry Potter can make things fly with a wand, I can make a blind woman smell color. There it is. I love looking at the different colors. When we hiked to Tintern Abbey from St. Briavel’s Castle almost every green looked exactly the same at first until I really started to think about the colors and look at them and then I realized that, of course, as I thought I would be, I was wrong. It makes a really good cheesy metaphor about being unique or something but I won’t use it because the end is too obvious from the beginning. There’s no point in that. There’s no struggle for understanding or…whatever else it takes to get a good jaunt out of a metaphor. I wish we didn’t train ourselves to find so much meaning in everything. We spend so much time as English people hashing and re hashing stories to the point where we start looking for meanings and double meanings in everything because taking something at face value isn’t good enough for an essay but what if something is just fine at face value? One of these days I’ll hand in an essay that goes like this: “Pride and Prejudice is a wonderful romance,” and then hand it in without any explanation because it’s true and that’s just fine, isn’t it? Do we really want any more essays on how complex Darcy is? Is he complex? Or did years of over-analysis thrust complexity on him? What about Elizabeth? Does she really change? And what about how superficial it is that she sees Darcy’s metaphorical house and falls in love with him instantly? Does anyone look at the story from that angle? About how instead of being a romance, it’s actually about a money-hungry girl who takes Charlotte Lucas’ advice and turns into Lady Catherine version 2.0? Of course not. But then, someone probably has which means even that analysis is old and what’s the point of that? There’s nothing for it. So I will stick with my one sentence essay and go on enjoying things at face value every once in a while without the analysis if I can. I’m like a trained monkey.

Synthesis Essay:

“From the point of yonder rolling cloud I plunge into my past being and revel there . . . and I begin to feel, think, and be myself again . . . mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.” ~William Hazlitt

I came into this trip not feeling exactly secure with myself. I wasn’t unhappy with my life necessarily but there were things about myself that I felt were childish or stupid or probably could do with some change. There is a very strong part of my mind that loves to dream and imagine and pretend in a way that no one else does and I felt like it should probably change. At the same time though, I didn’t want it to change. I thought I should, but I didn’t feel any real urgency to do so because I like doing it. I like the way I think. Sometimes I feel bad feeling the spirit more in fictional books and metaphors that sectional writers come up with than when I read the scriptures, for example. But God will speak to me in ways that I am ready to listen and if that means that I can find God through books I read and movies I see or whatever other means I find him then so be it. I am unique but I am not wrong or strange. At least not any more wrong or strange than anyone else. I am still unhappy with some of my life, but not that part of my life.

“And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” ~Genesis 1:31

“And out the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” ~Genesis 2:9

“For God so loved the world . . .” John 3:16

The Bronte’s were wrong. We talk so much about how we should separate ourselves from the world in the church. We should, in a symbolic way of moving away from the secular things that won’t bring us eternal happiness, but in another way, we should be very much a part of this world. God loves this earth. It is his creation every bit as much as we are. We might be greater because we are his children, but this earth is beautiful and it is his and there is no crime in loving the out doors. My mindset about being outdoors changed from the beginning of the trip. I’m not always keen on being outside, but there are times when I just need to be out and feel the sun on my face. I wish the states had a park system as they do here. I will have to hunt when I get home to find places where I can ‘be one with the gods’.

Phew. There it is. If you made it to the end I might make you brownies.

Evil or not evil? That is the question...

Wow. Another lame title. But that's ok because I'm doing two posts in one day. Mostly out of boredom, but also out of a measure of excitement over Harry Potter madness! First of all-Dan-you hate Ron? Sad day! Why on earth would you hate Ron? I could understand a certain level of annoyance with his movie counterpart-one of the biggest flaws I see in the movie is the transformation of Ron from bearer of wizard culture wisdom to comic sidekick. But hate Ron? That's rather depressing.

I had some friends over tonight to join me in a bit of Robin Hood love from the BBC-(yes, I've continued my mission to corrupt others) and one of my friends declared that he has read all of book seven via some very clever hacker friends. Hmm. I think I'll echo Kuzco from The Emperor's New Groove here for a moment-"Riiiiight". Would Scholastic really be that ridiculous and easy to tap into? Or Bloomsbury? I doubt it. He kept going on about "oh...but I can't tell you that. It's in the next book", etc. Good gravy. People are so gullible around Harry Potter time. Last time the book came out I was working at B&N and had several very confused people ask me the difference between the regular and deluxe box set versions of the book-they seemed to think that the deluxe edition had deleted scenes or an alternate ending or something. I wanted to very rudely remind them that books are not movies and they don't have deleted scenes or alternate endings outside of the Choose Your Own Adventure world.

On to the next question, then!

Is Snape Good or Evil?

Good. Ish.

In terms of plot development, Snape has to be good or Harry has been right about him the whole series. If that's the case than it's a bit anti-climactic. If Harry's been right the whole time and finally proves himself right it's much more anti-climactic for his character development than if Snape is really good and proves himself, and Harry has to come to terms with it-it's another symbolic way that he would rise above the point his parents were at when they were killed.

Let's look at Snapes' track record. I'm really fond of looking at this via. the second chapter of book 6: Spinner's End. I'm using this chapter because Liz has already addressed this same question with my same conclusion using other text for back up. Let's break things down by looking at the chapter:

In the chapter Bellatrix and Narcissa show up at Snape's rather bleak house because Narcissa is worried about a promise that Draco has made. The promise is never fully explained, but we know that it deals with Voldemort. We assume that the task Draco was given is to kill Dumbledore (as seen later on in the book). Since this is never stated directly it's still in the strongly assumed category (unless Jo said it directly in an interview...I can't remember. Draco more or less confirms it in Chapter 27). That's not the point. Narcissa is worried because her son is headstrong and foolish (he's a teenager, in other words), and she thinks that Draco is in over his head. She doesn't think he'll be able to complete the task. She's come asking for help from Snape for a few obvious reasons: he's in a convenient position to look out for him as a teacher at the school, and she trusts him as an old friend. Bellatrix isn't so sure. She states forcefully that she does not trust Snape (US, 25). Snape asks Bellatrix why she doesn't trust him.

"A hundred reasons!" she said loudly, striding out from behind the sofa to slam her glass upon the table. "Where to start! Where were you when the Dark Lord fell? Why did you never make any attempt to find him when he vanished? What have you been doing all these years that you've lived in Dumbledore's pocket? Why did you stop the Dark Lord procuring the Sorcerer's Stone? Why did you not return at once when the Dark Lord was reborn? Where were you a few weeks ago when we battled to retrieve the prophecy for the Dark Lord? And why, Snape, is Harry Potter still alive, when you have had him at your mercy for five years?" (US, 25)

She definitely gives us something to think about. One interesting question to consider is not so much why did Voldemort trust Snape from the beginning, but why he still trusts Snape. Snape is never very clear about all of that in this chapter. He just says that the Dark Lord understands, that Voldemort shouldn't feel the need to share all of it with Bellatrix to pacify her...etc. etc. It's a bit cryptic. Especially considering how good Voldemort is at Legilimency. Snape must be really really good at Occlumency. And then there's the question of why Dumbledore trust's Snape-that's even more ambiguous (which makes it more exciting plot-development wise for Harry and crew to discover why it is! More proof!)

Anyway. I'm not going to detail the whole chapter. Snape gives counterpoints for each of Bella's claims. He suggests that Voldemort has asked him each one of these questions as well and has accepted his answers. He also says something rather interesting- "You think he (Voldemort) is mistaken? Or that I have somehow hoodwinked him? Fooled the Dark Lord, the greatest wizard, the most accomplished Legilimens the world has ever seen?" (US, 26). Well. That'd make for an interesting plot twist. Most of what he gives Bellatrix from this point on seems like relative truth (in the "from a certain point of view" way ala. Obi Wan). Where the conversation gets meaty is when he addresses the last part of her question-why he allowed Harry to live. Snape's been doing pretty well up to this point, but here his answer gets a little weak. He says that he didn't kill Harry because he is Dumbledore's favorite and killing him would put him into Azkaban. Really, Snape? Wouldn't killing any student put him into Azkaban? He also says that it was apparent that he (Harry) had no extraordinary talent. Now, we know that Harry, whatever he is, isn't Snape's favorite student but this is going a bit far. Snape knows that Harry is a good student. He's not the best, but he has already managed to thwart Voldemort four times in person-more than any other full grown wizard save Dumbledore perhaps, but even Dumbledore hasn't survived a killing curse-he competed in the Triwizard tournament, he can produce a coporeal patronus, he can withstand the Imperius curse-no. Even Snape cannot deny that Harry is incredibly talented in unique ways. (Dense perhaps at times, but that's what makes him human and interesting as a character). Harry is not, as Snape claims to Bella-"mediocre to the last degree".

A few questions then-

1) Why didn't Dumbledore give him the Dark Arts job until this year? Was it because of the curse? Because he knew it would bring out the worst in Snape? Because he wanted to keep him on staff as long as possible to keep a close watch on him and didn't want him in the cursed post? And why did he give it to him this year? My guess?: Because Dumbledore anticipated what was going to happen at the end of the year-he knew that his days were numbered. Snape is very talented in the Dark Arts and would be a good challenge to Harry's already high skills in what it would take to defeat Voldemort in the end (Snape is still teaching Harry in the end-he tells him that he must learn how to keep his 'mouth shut and his mind closed' to be any match in a real duel). I also find it interesting that what bothers Snape the most in that last confrontation is when Harry calls him a coward. Wow. That's a nerve.

2) How much about the situation did Snape understand during this scene with Bellatrix and Narcissa? My guess? Not at the beginning. He was probably just guessing. But with Narcissa in her weak, crying state-he may have perceived her thoughts through Legilimency. Perhaps Dumbledore thought something like this might happen and told him the correct action to take in such a situation?

Pay attention to the last two and a half pages. This whole unbreakable vow thing is ridiculously important. Snape's expression is so unreadable-so stoic here. Of the three things he promises-the last one is the one that gets him. His hand twitches and he hesitates in a way that he did not hesitate with the first two questions. He has no problem watching over Draco or protecting him-it's completing the task Draco's been given that worries him. Couple this along with the conversation Hagrid overhears and his hesitance on the tower and his anger at being called a coward and you have a veritable mess of proof to the contrary. Snape is good. Or on the side of good. As I said earlier, I think it's safe to assume that Snape will never be Godfather to any of Harry's children. He isn't likely to start nicknaming any of his children Severus, I don't think-but he is on the side of good, working for the same cause. It will be interesting to see how everything plays out.

So there it is. Snape is good. Joni is good. Joni is tired. Joni is going to go to bed.